From 10 to 12 April, 2026, Duke University, in collaboration with the Holberg Prize, hosted a conference on Fredric Jameson and critical theory. The event featured Holberg Laureates Achille Mbembe and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as keynote speakers.
Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) insisted on “imagining a future which might be radically and constitutionally other.” The urgency of this task rested on his understanding of Critical Theory “as a way of keeping the negative alive in a period in which praxis, the unity of the negative and the positive, itself seems suspended.”
Over the years, Critical Theory has received scholarly and popular attention; it has simultaneously been pronounced dead and an enduring threat.
The conference was a three‑day celebration of Fredric Jameson’s scholarship, exploring the future of critical theory. In addition to revisiting Jameson’s 2008 Holberg Lecture, the conference featured a conversation between Achille Mbembe and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who received the Holberg Prize in 2024 and 2025 respectively; a keynote by Spivak entitled “Reading Jameson,” and a keynote by former Chair of the Holberg Committee Toril Moi entitled “Fred Jameson Teaches Us to Read: From Sartre to The Political Unconscious and Beyond”. Video from the events is available here.
More information is available on Duke University’s website.
